


Cursed

by klutzy34



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Friendship, M/M, Minor Character Death, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7405312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klutzy34/pseuds/klutzy34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy. Grace. Meka. Matty. Too many people Danny cared about have been torn away from him.</p><p>Not Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cursed

He thought he would die at 13. 

The world spun around him, dizzying and unyielding, blue and directionless, as Danny reached out desperately for anything to hold onto, only water sliding between his fingers as the current pulled him farther from land. In the whirlwind of panic, he only once glimpsed a flash of red trunks and then lost track of it entirely as the ocean separated him from Billy. Their parents warned them to stay close but Billy could never resist throwing down a challenge and Danny never backed down from taking one on. This was never supposed to happen, just a little ways out and back to prove who was the better swimmer.

Panic made him open his mouth to scream for help, the water muffling and shoving the words back, filling his mouth with water that forced its way down into his lungs. The feeling made Danny stop fighting for a moment, dangling helplessly as he was dragged farther, farther away from the beach, his family, life.

Then suddenly a hand wrapped around his wrist and pulled him up, a strong arm curling around him as he stared up at blue sky and bright sun. It wasn’t until he was back on the beach that a solid thunk on the back had him coughing up the water, emptying out until there was nothing but dry heaves. Feebly, he tugged on the shorts of his savior, repeating Billy’s name over and over again and pointing towards the ocean until he got the idea. 

Clara sobbed and chastised him, wrapping him in a towel and holding him tight as she stroked back his blond hair. Eddie tried to chastise him, but his voice shuddered with restrained emotion every time he tried to speak. It was Billy’s parents though, it was their voices that haunted his dreams years later. The desperate pleas, Billy’s mother calling out to the ocean as if she could convince it to bring her son back, his father calling for help. 

The primal scream that his mother made when his body was found a little farther down the beach hours later. Too late.

_Billy._

\---------------

Danny’s breath came in shallow gasps but he pushed on along the street, trying and failing miserably to find someone, _anyone_ , that would follow him back to the warehouse. The rational part of his mind that told him it was too late for Grace found itself buried under the sheer stubborn belief that it wasn’t late, that people survived worse and Grace would be just fine once he found help in this madness. That she would return home to her husband and baby girl after a brief stint in the hospital with a scar and a harrowing story to tell while on desk duty. 

He pushed farther, hand pressed against his ribs as if the pressure would lessen the pain so he could do what he needed to. He could not, would not fail Grace. More than just a partner, his best friend, his study partner for the detective’s exam, fellow Bon Jovi enthusiast and subtle support of his journey into fatherhood. 

His cry for help stuck in his throat as a rumble grew in volume around him, making the street shake under his feet and threaten to toss him to the pavement like a mistreated rag doll. The sun above winked out suddenly, massive gray clouds rolling in around him, leaving him disoriented as he tried to draw in a clean breath and could only hack out ash. He was breathing ash. Danny turned, throwing his hands out, looking for something to point him in the right direction, panicking and yet still holding tightly to his resolve, the only thing he had left. 

Bending down, he finally managed to pull his shirt over his nose and mouth, sucking in a deep breath before he stood upright and screamed for help with everything he had in him. The sound came out funny, almost as if in stereo, when he realized that he wasn’t alone anymore, that his voice was not the only one.

Grace’s body was retrieved from the warehouse on September 14th, 2001.

_Billy. Grace._

\---------------

He just wasn’t there _period._

Danny and Hawaii didn’t mix. Most of HPD didn’t want him there and he didn’t want to be at HPD, but if it meant being able to see his baby girl for more than brief stints here and there during the year, if that, then he would suck it up and deal with it. The suntan lotion on his desk, the snide comments aimed his way. Danny didn’t hold back on his end of antagonizing them either, which made for a powder keg situation that almost exploded one day until Meka stepped in and marched Danny out the door, telling him to cool his heels and shut his mouth.

It was an unlikely friendship but one that worked well as they fell into step as partners. Meka made working at HPD bearable again, gave Danny some kind of connection on the island. The distant possibility that maybe he might consider calling the place home in the very, very far future. The debt he owed Meka was one that he wasn’t sure he could ever fully repay, which meant he should have been there when Meka discovered the mole at HPD and went hunting. 

Instead, Danny now sat beside his gravestone, an open beer resting on the corner of the marker while he sipped from his own, staring despondently at the name etched there, the dates and the hyphen between. A hyphen that should have been so much longer. In thinking that, the peace that came with clearing his name paled to the guilt he felt and he squeezed his eyes shut, letting out a shaky breath.

_Billy. Grace. Meka._

\-------------

“I should have shot you.”

The words surprised Danny as they tumbled from his lips, apparently deciding to take a detour around the part of his brain that approved thoughts to be spoken outloud. He swallowed hard, palms resting against the glossy black finish of the casket. Behind him, family members and friends milled around the funeral home parlor, conversations quietly murmured, sympathies extended, gossips sharing the little tidbits they’d gleaned from not minding their own damn business. Danny had been the target of more than a few since his return home to Jersey with his little brother’s body. 

“I should have shot you,” he murmured again, shaking his head. “Leg, arm, something to stop you. I should have tried harder, reassured you, made you realize that we’d keep you safe. It was a white collar crime, Matty. You would have gone to the country club of prisons, right?” He hated the wavering note of desperation in his voice. The ‘what if’ scenarios that he imagined now wouldn’t do shit to bring Matty back, to sew his limbs back together, to wipe away the torture Reyes and his men put him through in pursuit of his money. Danny’s stomach lurched painfully as he remembered the state of his brother’s body, laid out on the ME’s table like just another homicide victim in just another case in his career. The smell of hot metal and gunpowder, blood and brains spread out on a dingy table in a dark basement in a foreign country. 

His body started to shake and he bit down hard on his lip, using the pain to find a steady ground to stand on again. He needed to be there for his mother and father, his sisters, not to be the one who needed someone to lean on. Still, the weakness clung stubbornly and he drew in a shuddering breath, grip tightening on the casket lid. “I’m sorry, Matty. I am so…sorry is such a fucking weak word,” he whispered, wiping the moisture from his eyes quickly as if to hide it from anyone that might approach next. “You did something stupid but you were a good person at heart and you didn’t deserve this. You deserved better. To be protected, to be helped and...I failed you.” Finally giving voice to that thought threatened to bring his whole world crashing down around him, so he stuffed it back into the recesses of his mind to compartmentalize and deal with later - if at all. 

With another deep breath, he stepped back from the casket and turned to fall in line with the rest of his family to greet the sympathetic faces waiting for them.

_Billy. Grace. Meka. Matty._

\----------

Steve told him he was going to die. 

Just like that, Steve was so absolutely fucking sure that he was going to kick the bucket in the very near future and sent Danny spiraling through destructive thoughts that momentarily held him frozen. _Another one lost, another one you failed, another one that being loved by you cursed._ His grip tightened on the yoke and he stared at the blue water stretching out before him, tuning out everything but Steve and the assistance on the radio. Felt the eerie calm embrace his panic and allow him to rationally process that the water landing they suggested would kill Steve for certain, while a beach landing, though still high risk, gave him a better shot. 

A better chance for Steve was a high risk that Danny would take over and over again with the possibility that he’d perish as well. 

His ribs were busted and god knew what else from being thrown forward onto the steering column when they crashed, contusions and cuts too many to count, but Danny dismissed them all, barely felt them as he rushed after the paramedics, latching on to the stretcher from the side. _Billy. Grace. Meka. Matty. Not Steve._ The new ending to the mental mantra startled him, then latched on, propelling him forward in a flurry of activity that made him forget the pain he was in, giving him the strength to do what he could for Steve while the doctor’s attended to him. 

To step forward when they needed a liver to save his life. 

As the mask slid over his face and the anesthesiologist instructed him to count back from 100, the mantra continued to run through his head, repeating on a loop even as the gas started to drag him away from the lucid world and into a thoughtless inky black existence where he felt nothing.

_Billy. Grace. Meka. Matty. Not Steve._

\----------------

The dishes were washed up and put away, the last of the food from Steve’s welcome home party shuffled off into Tupperware or sealed up and stowed away. Danny dried his hands on a towel and draped it over the edge of the sink, then gently lowered himself into a chair at the table, running his hands over his face.

Steve tried to put on a happy face for the party that welcomed him home, but the despondence took up most of the room in his eyes. In the last few weeks they shared a hospital room, he fell into a distant mood, not biting at the conversation topics that Danny threw his way, the bantering he tried to instigate, even outright insulting him on a few occasions and getting nothing. Danny couldn’t blame him. In the heat of the moment, offering part of his liver for a transplant to save his life seemed all well and good. However, the harsh light of day told a different story.

He tried to feign obliviousness as Steve scratched out a coded medical schedule on his calendar, doctors’ appointments and physical therapy, medications he needed to take and when, the list far from small. He ignored the pill bottles pushed to the side in a cupboard, Steve trying to hide them from the casual observer. The weakness he felt, the limits he would never be able to push his body to again, all pushed Steve into unfamiliar territory and he was trying to adjust as Steve knew how: alone. The only thing Danny could do was hover around, make sure he knew the support was there without being too pushy about it. Chin, Kono, Lou all offered the same, realizing an outfront offer would probably make sure Steve never took them up on it.

The first night home, Danny invited himself to stay. Steve looked like he wanted to protest, then mumbled something about remembering to shut off the light when he went upstairs to the guest room. He padded up the stairs, body heavy with exhaustion, changing into a t-shirt and ditching everything else onto a chair before he fell into bed. 

Then he couldn’t sleep. 

Danny snuck back to the hallway, peering through the crack in the door of Steve’s bedroom. He waited silently until he saw the steady rise and fall of Steve’s chest, then headed back to his own room.

The check-in became a pattern, Danny sneaking out of bed every hour or so to look in on him. The fourth time, he’d turned to head back to his room when he heard Steve’s faint voice from inside the room.

“Danno, just get your ass in here and take the other side of the bed. Then you’ll know I’m still alive without sacrificing your sleep to check.”

A slight flush spread across his cheeks at being caught, but he straightened up and pushed the door open, going to the end of the bed. Steve turned his head to look at him, squinting in the meager light provided from the moon outside. “Don’t argue with me, just do it. I’m not in the mood for it,” he added, but the words held no real irritation. Instead, he scooted over on to one side, patting the empty side of the bed.

This, this was why Danny didn’t regret stepping forward to make the offer. Steve’s life had and would continue to change. He was fighting an upward and lifelong battle now, but it wouldn’t consume his life entirely. The medications he would never see the end of, cold season would become a real problem, but some normalcy would return with time and hard work. 

Because he was alive for it to do so. 

Danny flopped down on the empty side of the bed, rolling on his side and resting an arm under his head. He closed his eyes, hoping sleep would finally give him a fighting chance when he felt Steve shift and then scoot closer, his shoulder resting against Danny’s back, one leg thrown over his ankles. Then his breathing returned to deep and steady, Steve once again fast asleep. He let his mind linger on every place they made physical contact, the very real reassurance that Steve was very much alive and for the most part whole and there. 

As Danny started to drift off into a deep, exhausted sleep of his own, the mantra returned to him once again. _Billy. Grace. Meka. Matty. Not Steve._

_Curse broken._


End file.
